Are You Only a Hacktivists Away from Chaos?

Data security is a hot topic right now with Target, Michaels, and other large companies reporting data breaches. After all the time, money, and publicity from the breaches, I am sure they wish they could turn back time and deploy a stronger authentication to guard against the black market hacktivists that caused the chaos.

In Cameron Shilling’s article “Is Your Business a Data Breach Away from Disaster?,” Shilling states, “data security breaches are not just perpetrated by Internet hackers looking for credit card numbers. For example, health care providers are targeted for medical ad insurance information, and educational institutions are targeted for financial aid and personal information about students, parents and alumni.” If your company is housing private information, you are a target for the hacktivists. No matter how small or how large, your company is at risk.

Even though this is a serious problem, we take these warnings and disregard them with thoughts like “it could never happen to me” or “that takes too much time and money.” But it could happen to you, and a serious data breach is just one hacktivists away, resulting in losing personal information and creditability with your customers.

Many companies do not realize that the cost of a data breach can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Shilling also points out that there are unforeseen costs to a companies data breach; “costs include direct expenses to investigate, provide notifications and remediate the breach, such as for legal counsel, computer forensic consultants, public relations specialist, credit monitoring services and price concessions,” these make up about 40% of the total costs for “fixing” a data breach. Shilling goes on to point out that “the greater losses, which are often hidden to most businesses, arise from indirect costs, like diminishing revenue and profits from lost customer business, and diminishing employee productivity from time spent addressing the breach and its aftermath.” Without a doubt, it is more cost effective and efficient to deploy a strong authentication solution before the breach takes place.

Everyone should take the necessary steps to secure their systems and private information. It is well worth the effort to protect against breaches. Many companies and organizations are turning to the affordable, strong, hassle-free two-factor authentication like PassiveKey, created by the authentication experts at PortalGuard.